Hopkins Hospital: From Queen Anne brick to Mondrian glass

“TACKY! The colors do not work with the iconic main building, looks like it would be nice for Brooklyn, NY. The 7 founding doctors are rolling in their graves.”
– Walter

“Rather than blithely dismissing the surviving Queen Anne building as ‘fussy,’ maybe Mr. Dilts could have given some thought as to why Billings seems so friendly and warm when compared to the sheer banality of the new building’s cold, stark, sleek, barren surfaces. . . Mondrian! Seriously? Wacky, antiquated De Stijl forms and silly interior technoid doodads (‘art’) that make you dizzy and confused. . . That blocky, abstracted cow in particular would probably have given me nightmares when I was a kid. . . a sinister Blade Runner atmosphere, as if patients check in but never check out.”
– Guest

“Hopkins Hospital has a bad case of ‘superblock-itis.’ This new complex could have been their opportunity to break up their impenetrable six square block massive monolith bounded by Orleans, Broadway, Monument and Wolfe into a civilized human-friendly campus. Instead they made it even more monolithic, especially as combined with the two square block parking garage superblock just to the south, and cutting off most urban contact to the underutilized Broadway subway station.”
– Gerald Neily

“The architects and architecture critics need to get over their besotted, nostalgic, historicist love affair with Modernism (and its failed superblock urbanism) and move on to stuff that might actually delight the eye (of other people besides the architecture critics) and enliven the street.”
– Guest

“Removing some of those blank walls, replacing parking lots/structures with mixed use buildings, and slowing down traffic would help create a campus atmosphere. Hopkins should focus more on place making.”
– Mark

“Someone needs to say something nice, so I’ll say it: It’s nice inside. . . Unfortunately, industry concerns on building security and controlling the environment trumps having ground floor retail. Without that, the streets feel hard and impersonal. Admire Johns Hopkins as a behemoth employer (25K persons on East campus, alone, and largest private employer in MD) and a savior to the local economy, but not for its beauty.”
– Intrepid

“Just think how many homeless could have been served with $1.1 billion.”
– robin baker
__________________________________________
Fascinated by that guy: David Simon’s take on his “angry man” rep

“Of course it reflects badly on Baltimore. I love the show and am glad it has found a place in the American cultural landscape, but that series has become the de facto image of Baltimore to the American people.”
– Westside Resident

“Whenever I hear this opinion, I want to bang my head against the wall. Lose the Baltimore inferiority concerns.”
– Mebrogm08

“The Wire showed the heart of decay in one American city. No culture is exempt but the American culture has been eviscerated by addictions and the wrong headed war on it. . . David Simon is a truth -sayer not a soothing soothsayer. He is telling us how we manage to survive despite ourselves. Hopefully he is shocking us out of our complacence and apathy.”
– Unellu

“Simon doesn’t like to ‘argue’ – he likes to win. He points out an urban problem, someone else calls out a solution (and rightly so – it’s not his job to come up with all of the answers). But things go wrong – consistently, mind-numbingly wrong – when he uses his not inconsiderable talents and resources to showcase a singularity: Nothing can get better in the city. Nothing. Not ever. . . Please, sir: Learn to live with the judgments you have passed on Baltimore and the people who live here. Own your hatred. Now that you have entered an apparently absurdist phase of your artistic growth, try to work on your self-awareness. By now it’s fair to call out this stuff for what it is: a shtick.”
– chart

“An angry man is an involved man. He is a passionate man. He is a sad man. He is a man who thinks human beings can do better. He is a man who wants to present a stark picture in order to draw attention. He is a also a man who wants to give voice to the voiceless. . . You are calling The Wire a useless self indulgence that damned Baltimore and Simon didn’t stick around to pick up the fragments. I suppose Joan Miro’s art condemning Spain’s dictatorships and wars would fall into the same category for you.”
– Unellu

“MY judgment is harsh? MY assessment of Simon’s work is myopic? Please take a closer look at the philosophy, such as it is, behind the man’s product. It’s a closed loop – no matter who you are or where you stand on the issues he spotlights, there is no way that any of us can make these unbearable things better. Twenty-odd years of that message, and I think a lot of us have had enough. . . For years there has been some graffiti on a building next to the northbound lanes of the JFK near Cold Spring. In faded paint, it reads, ‘Public Servants Aren’t.’ Seems to me this cynical nonsense could be Simon’s credo – his life’s work reduced to its essence.”
– chart

“Simon filmed what is as old as man. . . You are implying the man is a self righteous, pompous son of a gun. And I am calling you an ostrich.”
– Unellu
___________________________________________________
Paterakis wants to boost the size of Harbor Point by two-thirds

“Three million square feet of development at Harbor Point would require a complete revamping of the proposed transportation access. Caroline Street would be totally inadequate. A new Central Avenue bridge would be totally inadequate. The Red Line as proposed under Fleet Street would be totally inadequate. Buses? Let’s get real.”
– Gerald Neily

“Maybe he’ll pay $2.00 a year for taxes if it’s twice as big.”
– Mebrogm08

“It always amazes me how people in Fells Point can get so worked up over Paterakis’ developments while overlooking the greatest problem in the neighborhood, which would be the Perkins Homes. Perkins is the oldest public housing project in Baltimore and has become one of the most lethal. . . I’d like to see a broader master plan for the area calling for removal of Perkins, replacing it with less dense, mixed-income housing and maybe some loosening of the street grid.”
– Mark Adams

“Good points, but I think we need more density, not less. Average household size has declined since the 1950s, so even if we built at the same units per acre as the rowhomes which were replaced by Perkins, we’d still have far fewer residents than during Baltimore’s boom years within that same area. More density = more tax revenue, more ‘eyes on the street,’ and a larger market for new commercial/retail projects.”
– Mark

“The relative inadequacy of the vehicular transport infrastructure incorporating the proposed Harbor Point development with its neighborhood could prove a blessing in disguise. Gridlock is a great incentive for leaving one’s automobile parked, and dense pedestrian traffic creates both a feeling of community and a perception of safety.”
– Sabina Pade

What if Harbor East+Harbor Point become the new gated downtown and the old one is left to rot? . . . I think this area (and Harbor East) would have been much better if they had been designed to be mostly midrise residential with some low-key walk-to retail interspersed within. Right now both look like they will be new CBDs (akin to Tyson’s Corner, as someone mentioned earlier) that will further drain life away from the traditional transit-friendly downtown (which generally has nicer architecture too, in contrast to what here will turn out to be throwaway glass boxes with miserably short ‘design lives’).”
– Marc
_______________________________________________________
ANALYSIS: Are Baltimore developers allergic to mass transit?

“We can spend billions in tax dollars on the ICC, the Wilson Bridge, and the DC Metro, but the Baltimore area continues to suffer with an abysmal transit system. But if the Baltimore region isn’t willing to advocate for better transit, then so be it.”
– Richard

“What will happen if there is an extremely high tide, hurricane, or when the water from a hurricane that has passed by Maryland (not a direct hit) happens.”
– eastcoast

“I’m new to Baltimore and want to know if there are any transit advocates on city council?”
– Jeff Wachter

“Not every development has to be along the Red Line (should it ever get built).”
– Jacob

“Am not sure why the article’s title specifies *Baltimore* developers. Developers almost everywhere, save for Japan, tend to sidestep discussion of mass transit. . . in comparison with cities such as New York, Tokyo, Paris, DC, and the like, Baltimore is lacking a vital element: sufficient density of potential transit users.”
– Sabina Pade

“As a planner, I blame the transit planners for this sorry situation, not the developers or architects or politicians. Yes, density is good. Mixed use is good. Too much auto access is bad. The Harbor Point site is potentially spectacular and it appears that ASG has done a great job of taking advantage of this. Baltimore needs all the upscale growth it can get.Accordingly, this site cries out for great transit. Upscale residents, workers and visitors will only use transit if the transit is great…John Paterakis and his team need to be very concerned with the incompetence of the MTA planners. They can certainly see the pathetic excuse for a transit system which the MTA already runs. I don’t expect them to call out the MTA and their apologists while they are selling the project at public meetings, but they need to yell loudly behind the scenes.Harbor Point should be the clarion call for everyone to wake up to the wretched multi-billion dollar failure of the MTA Red Line plan.”
– Gerald Neily
______________________________________________________
Finding money for fire companies isn’t hard, but the politics are

“These political games and the refusal of our current administration to put residents first, means that the rest of us suffer. I hope and pray for the day when citizens get angry enough to demand better from their elected officials and agency heads – and stop allowing our city to deteriorate because of poor policy and planning by city officials.”
– Carol Ott

“The notion that there has to be a fire company within screaming distance of every neighborhood is comforting, but simply outdated. Medical calls now far outnumber fire calls, a large portion of the calls referenced in the article were actually medical calls. When no ambulances are available, as is frequently the case, fire companies are sent instead. Ideally we would have more ambulances and paramedics, not fire companies responding to calls chest pains.”
– MC

“You state that EMS calls outnumber fire calls and you are right, which stands the reason you need more fire companies. So what happens when the companies are out dealing with medical emergencies in their response area and a house catches fire in the same response area?? I’ll tell you, the next fire company that was put out of service as a cost cutting measure is gone. The next company up is now 6 minutes away instead of 3 minutes away the fire goes from a room and contents to a 2nd or 3rd alarm, now the public’s safety is at risk as well as the firefighters.”
– concerned FF

“Operation Care, which Mark suggests could be a target for costs savings, is a good program that is cutting down on ‘frequent flyers’ who repeatedly use the 911 system to get routine healthcare. . . Is it more vital than keeping stations open? Not sure, but I’d like to think it’s not either/or.”
– Where’s My Power

“Nothing like a good enema – oops, I mean – AUDIT needed to fix this mess. Chief Clack needs to tell the residents of the communities slated to lose 3 companies who will be responding not only to their 911 calls, but their non-emergency calls for in-home assistance, like smoke detectors, CO2 detectors, cat’s up a tree, etc. Maybe the FECO will come to the rescue???”
– Kim Trueheart
_______________________________________________________
Mayor sidesteps Royal Farms protesters

“Really??? Mega who came up what that name?? People we are not talking about a Walmart here. . . geesh. You honestly think that a convenience store is going to rip apart all the local shops and such??? That they will just die. . . I can see if MEGA Lowes came in beside your mom and pop home store what the protesting would be about. Really it is a convenience store. That’s all.”
– Ron

“People really should take a look @ the property now which is an absolute blight and compare to a new Royal Farms. 5,000 square feet is not ‘mega.’ CVS, Rite Aid, and/or Walgreens are typicially over 15,000 square feet and they’re not ‘mega’. Time to stop spreading misiniformation. Check out a new Royal Farms and you will then agree Royal Farms will be the best looking development on Harford Road. Also Royal Farms is local to Baltimore.”
– Jack McDougle

“Seriously?! Have you visited Hamilton and our awesome local businesses lately? How about Zeke’s Coffee, Red Canoe, The Chameleon Cafe, Koco’s Pub, Clementine, and Green Onion to name a few. . . these are some of the best looking development projects in Hamilton.”
– Becca

“I don’t care if Royal Farms is a multinational or not. The gas station plan affects negatively the 5 way intersection I live by. Gas station plan hurts our quality of life. Gas station plan hurts all rejuvenation going on in the Hamilton business area.”
– Roopvijayan

“Jack, really, what do you have to gain here by wooping it up for some random corporation? Do you work for them? Do you work for the owner of the property?. . . I’m thinking you don’t have children who use the library or go to Hamilton Elementary/Middle who will be at great risk crossing the intersection if this proposal goes through. And other peoples’ kids don’t matter to you.”
– GiGiTurbo
___________________________________________________
Bittersweet night for the crew of closing fire company

“We should be able to remove the mayor and fire chief from office. They clearly don’t care about the lives of people in Baltimore. When Rawlings-Blake came in one of the strong points of her campaign was to stop the rotating closures of fire house and now look at what she did. She outright lied to the citizens.”
– New_bran

“Three fire companies closed to save an estimated 750,000 out of a 3 BILLION dollar budget. That is well under 1/3 of 1% of the citys budget. How can Mayor Failings Blake show her face to a public she is endangering for such a small savings.”
– Fire and Metal

“Kim Trueheart is correct, the citizens are the victims. The firemen simply get re assigned to another fire station – this is precisely why there is very little savings that comes with closing these fire houses.”
– Fire and Metal

“I was wondering, does any of the City Council, the Mayor or her staff or the Fire Chief live near these closed companies.”
– Mkscotto57

“Two of the three companies (Trucks 10 and 15) are located in neighborhoods of extreme poverty and widespread vacant housing. We know of only one city official who (occasionally) lives near those stations – Councilman Warren Branch who sometimes stays overnight with his parents in East Balt. Branch strongly opposed the closure of the fire company. As noted in this article, Councilmen Pete Welch (Truck 10) and Jim Kraft (Squad 11) voted for the mayor’s budget that eliminated the companies.”
– baltimorebrew
____________________________________________________________
Two city fire companies to close, one will stay open until October

“With the budget being completely unaccounted for no one in Failings Blake office really knows if there is any true savings at all. She also likes to talk about “transparency” but it is all just that -talk. To make this announcement on a Friday afternoon shows me what type of weaklings Mayor Failings Blake and Chief James Clack are. The Chief even cowered just a few days ago and failed to keep his appointment on the Steiner radio show to discuss this issue with the residents who will be affected. Vote with your feet.”
– Fire and Metal

“Fire service cuts leading to improved response time is as dumb as no audits leading to more accountability.”
– Dennis

“What I’m not understanding is why FD union didn’t file a TRO on the closings immediately after announcement.”
– Mair

“The other 2 companys need to be saved this isn’t enough!!!”
– Ryan Murphy, via Twitter
________________________________________________
City agrees to pay state $1M for inmate clean-up crews

“Well, those better be some pretty big crews, because the City could pay approximately 60 people making the minimum wage working full time every weekday to do the same work for $900,000 ($900,000.00/$7.35 per hr./8 hrs. per day/255 working days in 2012). Can you ask the DOC how big the crews are?”
– Dave

“As someone who was at this Board of Estimate meeting I can tell you that the site of a minority contractor fighting for work, given how despicable the bid was, and being denied was a perfect example of people going to jail because they must commit crime to survive and once in jail they are given jobs working for free. This is very troubling as citizens are watching a decay in society. Hundreds of millions in tax breaks to rich corporations while we denigrate our citizens.”
– Cwals99

“Pay these guys a minimum wage. Many of them are not hardened criminals. They are there for DUI or for possession of drugs with intent to distribute–often the victims of the war on drugs and the victims of the failed war on poverty. You will not be restoring any faith in society in these cons, if you disrespect them as humans.”
– Unellu
________________________________
Long-serving housing chief Paul Graziano given new term

“The Maryland Constitution allows for the city and county residents to call for a referendum in which we can petition for the power to recall or set term limits on our elected officials. We need to prepare for a recall referendum in elections in two years!”
– Cwals99

“There is a vacant house in my neighborhood. It was condemned in Dec. 2011. Seven months later, no action has been taken to secure the property or to prevent vermin infestation. There is a violation (254531A) against the property, which is owned by a slumlord. What I want to know: Why isn’t this house racking up citations for garbage, for vermin (Health Code), for failure to board windows, for a rotting fence? Why isn’t the Housing Dept citing negligent owners who have thousands in visible violations but homeowners are routinely receiving violations for unlidded trash?”
– Melissa